


the only hope for me is you

by Aria



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Awful Siblings Who Love Each Other, Flashbacks, Gen, Post-Canon, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 12:33:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18052577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aria/pseuds/Aria
Summary: Allison wonders whether Vanya has a personality in there somewhere, or if it's just violin concertos all the way down.





	the only hope for me is you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheWrongKindOfPC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/gifts).



> For my excellent roommate: happy birthday, and thank you for having five billion feelings about this show with me. <333
> 
> Obviously this title is from the song of the same name; I hope we're all titling our fic with MCR lyrics, that seems like the way to go.

Drifting on a sea of painkillers, unable to do anything but lie there trying not to panic about ten different things, Allison thinks: why didn't Dad decide _I_ was the dangerous one?

Maybe he'd just never taken her seriously. Maybe he was so damn secure in his own superiority that he never worried that Allison could have turned his mind inside out with a handful of words. Maybe he trusted Allison's own failure of imagination, or her desperate willingness to follow orders. Maybe he thought that Allison's voice was something he could control, something more containable than Vanya's wordless outpouring of emotion.

Good call, Dad. Turns out you were right.

Allison blinks up at the ceiling, tears pooling in her eyes and sliding out the corners. She should be feeling helpless without her voice. She _is_. But the tears are from rage, pure and bright and useless, all for Dad. She loves Vanya. She understands Vanya. Turns out Vanya was right, too: Dad made them do this. All Allison can do about it is be an adult, and forgive her sister.

*

There's a particular weirdness to being the only girl in the inaugural class of the Umbrella Academy. All the boys wear the same shorts and blazers, their hair cut (by Mom, every other week) to Reginald Hargreeves' exact specifications, four identical dark heads plus Luther's bright one. Allison is alone in her skirt and her long cascade of curls, carefully cultivating the way she stands in public, the smile and the bounce in her step and her hands laced demurely behind her back, while the boys strike poses or lean on one another in triumph after they foil an evildoer. 

Allison isn't the only girl, of course. But Vanya doesn't _count_. Vanya never cultivates a smile or a bounce. Vanya sulkily fades into the background, always practicing violin two rooms away, ignorable.

(Unable to do anything but lie there trying not to panic, Allison remembers a scene gone faded with time, suddenly vivid with contextual understanding: little Number Seven crawling into Allison's bed and crying while Allison holds her. The nightstand rattles with the vibration of her sobs. Number Three, six years old, assumes her sister is exhausted and afraid from her time locked in isolation. 

The fact that there is nothing particularly noteworthy about time locked in isolation is distantly horrible, but anything can feel normal when it's the only thing you know. Dad locked Klaus in a mausoleum and Klaus cried on Diego for a week. Vanya in a vault in the basement doesn't seem _notable_.

Later that week, Dad announces they're ready to begin training in a group. Number Seven isn't invited. Allison feels angry and alone, surrounded by rowdy brothers, and blames Vanya for not joining her and presenting some kind of united front. What use is a sister anyway, Number Three thinks bitterly, and spends the next decade slamming doors when she hears the sound of Vanya's violin.)

*

Five lands them, and their surprised teenage bodies, in the night-quiet concert hall. Vanya sags in Luther's arms, thankfully unconscious, her awful blocky childhood bangs covering her forehead.

"What's the date?" Luther asks.

"I don't know," Five says with tight patience, sounding winded. "We should find a _newspaper_."

Klaus giggles, staring at a seemingly empty space. "Hey, Ben looks like a kid! Weird, man."

"Are you saying that Ben's ghost kept looking older?" Diego asks. Klaus nods. "See, _that's_ weird."

"Can we focus?" Five demands, less breathlessly. "If this place has security guards, they're going to have some questions for the delinquent school children. Let's go."

They shuffle out into the midnight street, raggedly disorganized. Dad always kept them in regimented lines when they were in their uniforms, and it strikes Allison as surprisingly funny, and surprisingly transgressive. Also weird, like literally everything else about this situation. When Five fell out of his temporal anomaly into their back yard, he'd been wearing a middle-aged man's suit, and had to change back. Who knows why all of them are dressed in their childhood clothes now.

"Two thousand one," Five announces, crouching in front of a newspaper display. "Convenient. We look about the right age." He looks back up at the rest of them. "Obviously we can't go back to the Academy."

"I know a place we can hide out," Diego says.

"Of course you do," sighs Luther.

They go. Allison keeps an eye on Vanya, still unconscious in Luther's arms. Her throat doesn't hurt anymore; maybe the de-aging had the side effect of healing her. But she doesn't try to speak, because when she does, she knows someone -- most probably Luther or Five -- is going to ask her to say something to Vanya. _I heard a rumor that you feel calm about your powers. I heard a rumor that you would never hurt us._ Allison was going to say something irreversible to Vanya, before her sister lashed out and slit her throat, but ... she can't. She can't compound that betrayal.

*

A year into her newly-launched acting career, flushed with success, Allison feels expansive with goodwill and attempts to reconnect with her siblings. Luther is always only a phone call away, at least in theory, though more often than not when Allison calls it's Mom or Pogo who answers, telling her apologetically that Dad has sent Luther on a mission. _Come away with me_ , Allison always thinks of saying, when she does manage to get Luther on the phone; _I heard a rumor that you don't need Dad's approval anymore._ Luther can make his own decisions. So can Diego, who apparently just washed out of the police academy, according to one very unimpressed Officer Eudora Patch, who gives Diego's latest number to Allison with a dry, "You can keep it." When Diego answers the phone, it's in monosyllables, and he is emphatically not interested in lunch. Allison isn't surprised. Klaus is totally untraceable, several weird sketchy jobs and rehab centers turning up dead ends, and Allison isn't surprised by that either. 

Vanya has a stable address in the city, and a phone number that works, and when Allison asks if she wants to get lunch, Vanya says, "Sure, why not."

At the cafe Allison chooses, Vanya orders a massive black coffee and a croissant and watches Allison with narrow wariness while she consumes both. Vanya looks almost exactly the same as Allison remembers, nothing about her having grown at all except for her hair and the faint spidering lines of tension around her mouth. She has apparently never heard of color, all her clothes a sort of muted charcoal that helps her fade into the background, and Allison feels irrationally, directionlessly angry.

"How have you been?" she asks.

Vanya shrugs, a hunch of her shoulders. "I've been making rent giving violin lessons." Her mouth twitches at one corner, more the hope of a smile than an actual expression. "I'm trying out for the orchestra soon."

"Wow, that's great!" Allison says. She wonders whether Vanya has a personality in there somewhere, or if it's just violin concertos all the way down.

"Yeah, I guess." Vanya picks apart her croissant. "I mean, I probably won't make the cut, and if I don't, I'm going to have to find something else. When I said I'm making rent giving violin lessons, I mean _barely_."

"You'll think of something," Allison says, in her best encouraging voice.

Vanya breathes out a long sigh. "Thanks," she says. "Uh, how about you? How are you doing?"

"Me? So great." Allison leans forward. " _Let In The Rain_ did _so_ well in the box office, and I'm starting principle photography of _Tell Me Tell Me_ in two weeks, and my agent says that if that one does well I might get an Oscars invite next year."

"Wow," Vanya says flatly.

Allison has to swallow her anger again. Vanya does _everything_ flatly. That's how she is. Just because Allison tried to be excited about Vanya's boring life doesn't mean that Vanya is obligated to be excited about Allison's legitimately amazing one. So Allison takes a deep breath and keeps telling Vanya what she's been up to, while Vanya watches her with no expression and Allison feels the gulf between them stretching unbearably wide. 

*

Diego's place turns out to be a warehouse, dusty but not visibly infested with anything. In short order Five has unearthed blankets from somewhere and made a fire in a barrel, and they're all sitting in a circle around it. Vanya is still unconscious, her head pillowed on Allison's skirt.

"So ... what are we going to do with her?" Diego asks, gesturing to Vanya.

"We have to restrain her somehow," Luther says.

"Ooh, yeah, because that worked out so well last time," Klaus puts in. He glances at the empty air nearby and adds, "What, like _you're_ full of helpful suggestions."

"We don't have the means to keep her sedated," Five says, "and none of us are qualified to talk her down."

"We didn't _try_ to talk her down!" Allison snaps, the words dragged from her by sheer force of frustrated indignation. Five's eyes snap to her with a predator's focus, and she realizes that he must have known she could talk this whole time, and was waiting.

"Are you volunteering?" he asks.

"Yes," Allison says. "But not with my power. Just -- remember how badly all of this messed all of us up. She's scared and upset and she needs us to _help_ her." She starts out addressing Five, but by the end she's looking at Luther instead, willing him to unclench his jaw and untense his shoulders and try _not_ punching something, just this once.

"If she slits your throat again, I'll break her neck," Five says casually. "But anything's worth a try right now. Good luck."

"You probably won't get close enough to break her neck," Diego grumbles. He looks so twitchy, separated from his knives. "Don't die, Allison."

"Yeah, don't die," Klaus says. He flutters his hands at her, like he's thinking of hugging her but doesn't want to go to the effort of getting up and coming around the fire barrel. "Good luck to both you crazy kids! Ben says good luck too."

Slowly Luther stands, heaving Vanya's body in a bundle of blankets with him. "Let's find you someplace quiet," he says.

Allison follows him in silence, to a corner of the warehouse near the floor-to-ceiling windows, most of their panes still unbroken. The city's lights shine below. The moon is whole and waxing. Allison settles her own blanket on the floor, and accepts Vanya's curled form, her head pillowed on Allison's lap again. 

As Luther straightens to leave, Allison says, "Wait." Luther pauses. Allison leans up, pressing a kiss to his cheek. "Thank you," she whispers.

"Good luck," Luther says, echoing Five, when Allison can clearly hear her other brothers' _don't die_ in his tone. She gives him a soft smile. He goes.

*

Allison meets Vanya's eyes across the concert hall, and Vanya is still in black and white, but Allison has never seen her look so vivid. Vanya was smothered inside herself for years, and now she's burning, and Allison might be afraid, of her, for her, but somehow she's happy, too. Vanya looks at Allison and smiles, the most loving smile her sister has ever given her, and Allison cannot believe she thought of Vanya as flat. It is violin concertos all the way down, and all of them are terrifying, and magnificent, and Allison loves her sister as much as she's ever loved Claire, as much as she's ever loved Luther, as much as she's loved anyone.

*

Vanya stirs with a confused mumble, and Allison pets her hair. "Hey, Vanya."

"Hey," Vanya says, blinking up at her. She frowns in confusion. "Allison?"

Allison has thought of so many different ways to try explaining things to Vanya, depending on how much Vanya remembers, or what she understands is going on. But in the end the only thing she knows Vanya needs is to not be manipulated or lied to, just this once, so Allison says, "Five brought us backwards in time. It did the same thing to us as it did to him."

"Oh." Vanya struggles upright. She touches her bangs and makes a face. She looks around, spotting the others huddled around the fire on the other side of the warehouse floor. "Where are we?"

"Someplace Diego knows," Allison says, infusing her tone with the implied eye-roll.

"Oh," Vanya says again. She takes a deep breath. "I'm, uh. I'm glad you're alive."

"Me too," Allison says softly. "You remember."

Vanya nods, an awkward jerky motion Allison knows by heart. "I. What. What happened to the moon?"

Allison winces. "I startled you. You shot a -- a beam at the moon. And it ... sort of exploded?"

"Five's apocalypse," Vanya says, and buries her face in her hands. The windowpane nearby starts to shiver. "Oh God, I fucked up."

"We all did," Allison says quickly. "Maybe me and Luther more than the others."

Vanya takes several deep, shuddering breaths. The windows are still rattling. "Aren't you _scared_?"

"Well, yeah," Allison says, on a laugh. "Aren't you?" Vanya nods, trembling, and Allison scoots closer, wrapping an arm around Vanya's shoulder. Vanya leans into her heavily. "We're like twenty years in the past, in our teenage bodies," Allison says, "and Five is a little sociopath who just failed his mission, and I am seriously questioning Luther's leadership skills, and you just had a meltdown about a power that feels huge and scary because Dad was an asshole who decided he could shut you down instead of helping you. Oh, and Klaus can manifest Ben. It's been a weird week, and I am so, so scared."

The windows stop shaking. Vanya breathes, in and out, in and out, in time with Allison. "You were right about Leonard," she says.

"Uh huh." Allison squeezes Vanya closer.

"Are they going to kill me?" Vanya whispers.

"No," Allison says firmly. If Five tries anything, she has definitely heard a rumor that absolutely none of them are going to kill each other, but there's a reason she stopped, and she's not going to offer this plan like a reassurance when it's anything but. "Are you going to kill them?"

"I don't know," Vanya says. "I don't want to."

"Good enough for me," Allison tells her. She turns and presses a kiss to Vanya's forehead, through the bangs. "We can stay over here as long as you want."

"I don't know what I want," Vanya murmurs.

"I want a second chance with my amazing sister," Allison says. "How does that sound?"

She sees Vanya smile, the slow curl of a smile turning hopeful and brilliant, lines of bitterness not yet etched into her younger face. "Yeah," Vanya says. "Okay, let's do that."


End file.
